The present invention pertains to securing a face guard to a football helmet so that the guard is restricted from moving in all directions.
A football helmet is a plastic shell that protects ones head while playing the game of football. This shell, however, leaves the face unprotected. Thus, a grid-like series of plastic coated metal bars is attached to the helmet on the top and on the sides to protect the face. However, the face guard can also be constructed of just plastic segments. Football is a collision sport and this system of the helmet, face guard and attachments must withstand all blows encountered by the player and distribute and redirect these forces away from the player's face and head.
Two prior art patents which disclose mounting systems for mounting a face guard to a football helmet are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,086,664 and 4,633,531, herein incorporated by reference. In both of these face guard mounting systems are disclosed wherein the side attachment straps provide no means of restricting the face guard from moving through the loops of the prior art side attachment straps upon contact. The direction of this movement is perpendicular to the direction that the prior art side attachment straps are pointing in. U.S. Pat. No. 4,086,664 has its side attachments mounted in compression and U.S. Pat. No. 4,633,531 has its side attachment straps mounted in tension; however, it turns out that this problem of movement through the loops is not restricted to one attachment method, tension or compression, but rather a problem in that neither method restricts the movement in all directions.
In prior art face guard mounting assemblies, the face guard is considered to be hinged, about a horizontal axis, by the two front attachments. This allows, if the side attachments were not in place, for the guard to be swung in an arc pattern on the helmet in the fore and aft directions. Thus, if the side attachments were not in place and the face guard was pushed back from its designated position on the helmet, it would swing angularly upward toward the rear of the helmet in an arc pattern. The face guard is attached to the helmet by two front attachments and by a single attachment on each side of the helmet.
Background information is also needed on where the prior art side attachment strap is placed and in what direction it restricts the face guard from moving. The face guard has a rear portion that extends over the ear flaps of the helmet shell. This rear portion is comprised of a lower and an upper bar, that bend angularly upward towards the rear of the helmet, these bars project from the main frame of the face guard. The lower of these two horizontal bars has a bar stemming from it, at approximately a 90 degree angle, forming an "L" shape, that is upwardly inclined toward the top of the face guard. This upwardly inclined bar connects to the upper horizontal bar and then connects to the top of the face guard; thus, completing the rear portion of the face guard. These two horizontal bars and the upwardly inclined bar, that connects the two, form the rear portion of the face guard that gets secured to the helmet. The 90 degree angle, although it could conceivably vary between approximately 65 and 115 degrees, referred to above, is a constant on all of the face guards that the leading manufacturer, Schutt, produces. The improved side attachment strap utilizes the consistency of this angle, enabling it to be used on all of these face guards. However, the lower angle that is formed between the top-most horizontal bar and the upwardly inclined bar, of the rear section of the guard, does not remain constant on each of the fifty-one different face guards that Schutt manufactures.
The designed placement of the prior art side attachment strap is as close as possible to the lowest of the two horizontal bars that comprise the rear portion of the guard. The horizontal bars are slightly angularly inclined upwardly toward the rear of the helmet, and the prior art side attachment straps should follow this inclined path toward the rear of the helmet. The prior art side attachment straps were designed to Sit as close as possible to the lower of the two horizontal bars of the rear section of the guard; this is because the top front two attachments act as a hinge for the face guard. Thus, it is better when the prior art side attachment strap is lower because there is a longer moment arm to absorb the impact.
The two prior art side attachment straps secure each rear portion of the guard to the helmet. Each prior art side attachment strap consists of a single loop that encircles the vertically inclined bar of the rear portion of the guard. Therefore, each prior art side attachment strap restricts the guard from moving only along the arc pattern that is set up as a result of the guard being hinged at the top of the helmet by the front two attachments.
However, the prior art side attachment strap has no means of restricting the upwardly inclined bar of the rear portion of the guard from being moved down, upon contact, through the single loop of the prior art side attachment strap. The bar moving down through the side attachment loop could be looked at on some helmet systems, as a tilting phenomenon. Since the guard is attached by the two front attachments at the top of the helmet, both sides of the face guard cannot get moved down; however, one side of the guard can slide down through the loop upon contact approximately one inch. Thus, the guard appears to be slightly tilted on the helmet. This movement is both a safety problem and an enormous inconvenience to the player. A major safety problem is that unexpected stresses could be set up in the helmet, face guard or in the prior art side attachment straps that could cause any or all of them to fail. When one rear portion of the guard moves down approximately one inch, the chin strap buckle gets covered over, which does not allow the chin strap buckle to be disengaged from the chin strap snap until the equipment manager loosens the prior art side attachment straps and readjusts the face guard on the helmet. This is very inconvenient to the player and the equipment manager; because, when one's chin strap moves from the original place that it was adjusted to, which often occurs, the player cannot readjust the chin strap himself. A safety problem hazard is if the chin strap had to be removed from the player in an emergency, the process would be delayed because of this movement. Also, the prior art side attachment strap allows the guard to shake and rattle around during the course of play, which is very distracting to a player during game situations.